Vista startup continually fails

[LeonT.]

Out of the blue I've begun experiencing a severe problem w/ starting up my laptop...

Once I power it up, it loads for a moment, reaches black screen, and then immediately shuts down out of nowhere. Subsequent reboots lead me to the Startup Repair tool, which searches for a problem but then concludes that it "cannot be automatically repaired".

I've tried booting in Safe Mode, same problem. I've also attempted to recover the "Last Known Good Configuration" but that hasn't given me any success either.

After the Startup repair tool fails to repair the problem I can view the details of the problem--it provides me with a list that is, to me at least, completely incomprehensible...

Problem Signature:
Problem Event Name: Startup Repair V2
Problem Signature 01: AutoFailover
Problem Signature 02: 6.0.6000.16386.6.0.6000.16386
Problem Signature 03: 6
Problem Signature 04: 917517
Problem Signature 05: CorruptVolume
Problem Signature 06: BadPatch
Problem Signature 07: 0
Problem Signature 08: 3
Problem Signature 09: WrpRepair
Problem Signature 10: 10
OS Version: 6.0.6000.2.0.0.256.1
Locale ID: 1033

And that's it. Can anyone help me shed some light on this situation? I know "CorruptVolume" and "BadPatch" don't look good to me, but I'm still holding out hope.

Thanks for your help!

 

[Mak 2.0]

It looks as if your install might have gone south. It looks as if either a Windows Update or something has corrupted your drive. Sorry.

It looks as if the only thing you can really do is use a LiveCD to backup some files and format and re-install.

 

[mqudsi]

There's a chance that you can fix it by entering the command prompt in the repair environment:

chkdsk /r /f c:

If it's a corrupt boot volume, that might be able to fix it.

Something else to try: you might be able to recover some of the data with a Windows Vista Recovery CD - it'll allow you to use System Restore to roll your system back to a previous date.